London: New research shows that dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases are increasingly affecting people from an earlier age.

Professor Colin Pritchard's latest research published in the journal Public Health has found that the sharp rise of dementia and other neurological deaths in people under the age of 74 cannot be put down to the fact that people are living longer.

The rise is because a higher proportion of old people are being affected by such conditions, and what is really alarming, is that it is starting earlier and affecting people under 55 years of age, reports Science Daily.

Tessa Gutteridge, director of Young Dementia, UK, says: "The lives of an increasing number of families struggling with working-age dementia are made so much more challenging by services which fail to keep pace with their needs and a society which believes dementia to be an illness of old age."

The research highlights that there was an alarming ‘hidden epidemic’ of a rise in neurological deaths between 1979-2010 of adults (under 74) in Western countries, especially in the UK.